And… links are dull today. Let me instead recommend a comic to you: Leslie Stein’s epic story “Jonathan Part 1″. Briefly, a single mother and her two children visit a friend and her child at the beach. The children play. The mother meets a man, Jonathan, and becomes involved. It’s a seemingly casual tour of a very rocky emotional landscape (childhood, parents and parental figures, illness), drawn with a care and devotion I hardly ever see anymore. Leslie’s pointillist panels reveal a ton but never impede the story — and instead kind of float along as the weight of the characters accumulates. That’s kind of what I mean by “epic” — this comic brings you through multiple stations of life in just 17 pages, compressing tumultuous child and adult needs and emotions into a handful of events. Anyhow, there’s your weekend reading.